Football fever warms Miami's Little Havana

Carla Marinucci, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, January 25, 1995

1995-01-25 04:00:00 PDT MIAMI -- MIAMI - A few miles from the field where the 49ers are preparing for Super Bowl XXIX memories that will last a lifetime, Amparo Jimenez practices a craft that has spanned generations.

She takes a sheet of fine tobacco, moistens her weathered fingers and hand-rolls it lovingly, as if shaping a sculpture. Minutes later, it is a fine cigar. Jimenez makes them one at a time, in the time-honored Cuban tradition.

Her workplace is in Little Havana, the enclave of about 95,000 that is the heart of the Latin American community here. It seems worlds away from the hysteria of players and media that precedes Sunday's championship game between the 49ers and the San Diego Chargers.

But amid the sounds of tropical music and the aroma of fried plantains, in the talk of the barbershops and cafes of Little Havana, there is deep feeling for the most American of traditions - the Super Bowl.

"I'm really excited about it, and the fact that it's being played here is very important for our community," says Ernesto Perez Carrillo, president and second-generation owner of El Credito Cigars, the small factory where Jimenez and 38 other experts hand-roll 6,000 cigars a day on wooden tables, as they have done for decades.

Officials from the National Football League seem to know of this place by word of mouth. On an afternoon during which they pop in frequently, ordering cedar boxes of cigars, Perez Carrillo talks sports.

Cubans "are almost as addicted to football as they are to baseball," says Perez Carrillo, whose father started the business in Cuba 88 years ago.

"Yes, it's important to us. I'm hearing our customers, and they're preparing for it all," says Mirelde Clemente, a haircutter at Alberto's Barber Shop, just down Calle Ocho, the pulse of this area that Spanish-speaking residents call "Habana Pequena."

"They're thinking, "What am I gonna be selling?' And they'll be out there, selling everything," says Clemente, laughing as she sits in a barber's chair between jobs, ticking off the food, the T-shirts, the caps to be hawked to tourists.

To many of her older clientele, more likely to have shop window posters proclaiming "Down With Castro" than those heralding Super Bowl Sunday, "The sport of football itself isn't so important," Clemente says.

But Pablo Canton, 42, a city administrator, says the Super Bowl is more than just a sales opportunity to a younger generation of Cuban immigrants like himself. It is a sign they are at home completely with the American way.

"If you go to the park across the street, the old men who are sitting around will say to you, "Super-what?' " says Canton. "They have no idea what you're talking about. They only care about playing dominoes and overthrowing Castro - and they'll tell you that '95 will be their year.

"I have three kids, and they're American. And they know that what we have, we owe to this country. Among my friends, there are at least three Super Bowl parties."

Canton, who immigrated in 1961 as a teenager, says 1995 represents a time for Miami to shine in the eyes of the nation.

Perhaps more than any recent event, the Super Bowl allows Little Havana residents to demonstrate the strengths of their community - a strong, vibrant place where English is virtually unheard, where family-run businesses dominate, where upwardly mobile Cubans live side-by-side with an increasing number of struggling new immigrants from Central America.

This Super Bowl, these residents hope, will be different from the one six years ago, which was preceded by rising racial tensions and riots in Miami's Overtown area. Since then, their city has been humbled by a devastating hurricane and battered by a score of fatal attacks on foreign tourists, and has struggled to manage waves of refugees from the seas that lap the city's expansive beaches.

Many say Super Bowl XXIX will show the world that Miami can be an example to the nation: It can present a positive picture of the effects of immigration.

"The Cuban community brought this town up, made it what it is today," Clemente says from her seat at Alberto's.

"We came here with nothing, but as we had successes, we gave a helping hand to other (Latin American) communities."

At Casa Roman, a sidewalk takeout and restaurant, Eduardo Luis Eustaquio sits at the counter, chain-smoking, recalling his own immigration in the Mariel boat lift.

"Discrimination, it will always be with us," he says.

"But we came here to work, and we've shown what we can do in this town. Miami is what it is because of the immigrant."

In his nearby shop, Perez Carrillo, who sold $1.3 million worth of his cigars in 1994, plans for Super Sunday.

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He nods around his factory at the elderly cigar-makers, some of whom have worked at the craft for 40 to 50 years. On Sunday, those crafts people and Perez Carrillo, a 49ers fan, will watch the game from Calle Ocho.

"We'll be working," he says with a big smile, proudly puffing away. "I think San Francisco's gonna win it, and I think a lot of people will be coming by to pick up cigars and celebrate." &lt;

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